Homemade chocolate candy

Makes 10 pieces | 1 hour | Easy

I want to start by saying that these pictures were the hardest to take out of all the pictures, and different foods, I've photographed for the blog. The actual candy turned out amazing and the styling was cute so everything should have been easy.

But it wasn't.

Every picture I took didn't look good and our frustration kept growing. We just couldn't figure out why we didn't like the outcome. We changed the setting and styling four times before, when I was ready to give up, I by accident looked down at the almost melted chocolate which we had temporarily placed on a cutting board and thought to myself "that's kinda cute".

It was the most frustrating photography session yet in our short food blogger career, because we simply couldn't understand what the problem was. This is, of course, quite common in styling food, sometimes you get stuck and don't know why -- but this was the most extreme I've ever experienced.

So what did we learn from this? Nothing really.

Or well, I guess you could say we learned that even if you've planned everything in advance and you think you know exactly how you want to shoot something, it might not turn out like that at all in reality. But when it doesn't turn out the way you want to, don't panic. Just breathe, sit down and try to analyse what's wrong and then continue.

Don't take 400 pictures of a few chocolate pieces in panic, like we did. At least you can learn from our mistakes.

But let's get to the candy now! I read a tutorial on how to make your own chocolate, and I immediately thought to myself "it's too hard". But after a closer look I realised it was basically just melted cocoa butter.

"Hey, I can totally pull of this melting stuff thingy", I thought.

After a few failed tries these chocolate bites turned out soooo good that I'm never buying chocolate from the store again. That might be a slight exaggeration but you get the point. It's really easy.

I didn't experiment with different flavours this time, instead I kept it quite simple with two of my favourite tastes: coffee and hazelnuts. I'm very eager to try everything from oranges, sea salt to, why not, even fudge! I topped a few of these bad boys with a thin slice of peanut butter, and those really tasted amazing. So if you're a big peanut butter lover (who isn't, right?) then I definitely recommend that you try that.

Homemade chocolate bites are best enjoyed on your sofa sipping on a glas of your favourite red wine and contemplating life.

Or by binge watching the new season of Girls.

- Lotta

70 g coconut butter

3 tbsp cocoa powder

2 tsp agave syrup or honey

1 tbsp strong coffee

5-7 hazelnuts

1 tbsp sugar-free peanut butter

1 tbsp vegan milk

A pinch of sea salt

Melt the butter in a bowl held over some boiling water and remove after all of the butter is liquid

Add the cocoa powder into the mix and blend well

Add the honey, coffee and salt into the mixture and blend until even

Pour everything into an ice cube tray

Chop half of the hazelnuts and divide them evenly amongst the pieces in the tray

Freeze for 30 minutes

Make the peanut butter mixture by mixing the peanut butter and milk in a bowl with a spoon

Add the peanut butter mixture on top of half the candies

Freeze for another 30 minutes

Decorate the bites with the rest of the hazelnuts, some cocoa powder, or coconut flakes